Ashton Kutcher leaves Sound Ventures to launch new VC firm focused on AI infrastructure

Ashton Kutcher Departs Sound Ventures After 11 Years

Ashton Kutcher is leaving Sound Ventures, the venture capital firm he co-founded with Guy Oseary in 2015, to launch a new VC firm with Morgan Beller 1

1

. The split marks a strategic pivot for the actor-turned-investor, who has built a reputation as one of Silicon Valley's most successful celebrity backers. Sound Ventures manages close to $2 billion and has delivered strong returns through concentrated bets on companies like Brex, Gusto, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Fei-Fei Li's World Labs 1

1

2

2

. A leaked document earlier this year revealed that Sound Ventures holds a 0.15% stake in OpenAI valued at $1.3 billion 2

2

. Stanford finance professor Ilya Strebulaev, who tracks top-performing VCs, noted that Kutcher "consistently makes it onto our rankings of top unicorn investors" 2

2

.

New VC Firm with Morgan Beller Targets Foundational Technologies for AI

The new venture capital firm, which has not yet been publicly named, will be co-founded with Morgan Beller, who brings deep experience across crypto, AI, and venture capital 1

1

. Beller recently served as a general partner at seed-focused VC outfit NFX and previously co-led Meta's Libra project at Meta, the cryptocurrency initiative that was later renamed Diem before being shut down 1

1

3

3

. She also spent nearly three years as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz 1

1

. A spokesperson for Ashton Kutcher told The Wall Street Journal that the two "are working together on an early-stage venture capital firm that will be focused on investing in a post-AGI world" 2

2

. The firm will concentrate on early-stage investments in AI infrastructure, energy projects, and deep tech startups—companies built around hard science and engineering breakthroughs rather than software alone 1

1

.

Strategic Shift Reflects Diverging Investment Philosophies

Ashton Kutcher leaving Sound Ventures stems partly from different views on which startup stages to target for investments 1

1

. Sound Ventures has drifted toward backing more established companies in recent years, deploying more than $800 million into positions in Anthropic, OpenAI, and World Labs 2

2

. Kutcher, however, wants to return to early-stage investing and chase what he sees as the next wave of innovation 2

2

. In a letter Sound Ventures shared with its limited partners in May, Kutcher wrote: "Now is the right time for me to pursue the next wave of innovation—infrastructure, energy and deep tech" 2

2

. The letter explained that Kutcher and the Sound Ventures team had different visions requiring "different capital structures, different time horizons and different operational resources" 2

2

. The departure appears amicable—Kutcher will continue to serve as an advisor to Sound Ventures, while Guy Oseary and Sound general partner Effie Epstein will advise the new firm 1

1

3

3

.

Betting on the Layer Beneath AI Labs

The split signals where at least some venture capital money is heading next: away from frontier AI labs and toward investing in AI infrastructure—the data centers, energy solutions, and hard-science-driven ventures that power them 2

2

. While Sound Ventures built its reputation on concentrated, high-conviction bets in category-leading AI labs, Kutcher's new firm appears focused on the infrastructure layer underneath those companies 1

1

. This approach could prove safer if the AI bubble ever bursts, as physical assets like data centers and energy projects may retain value beyond AI applications 2

2

. Deep tech startups generally encompass areas like quantum computing, nuclear energy, aerospace, and robotics 2

2

. The timing puts Kutcher and Beller in a crowded field—Founders Fund recently closed a $6 billion growth fund focused on AI and defense technology, Accel raised $5 billion for late-stage AI bets, and Eclipse closed over $1 billion for early-stage deep tech 3

3

. The first quarter of 2026 saw a record $297 billion flow into startups globally 3

3

. What distinguishes the new firm is its combination of early-stage focus and sector specificity, betting that the better opportunity lies upstream in backing the infrastructure companies that later-stage AI giants will depend on 3

3

.